


thick skin

by veidtous



Series: Color Theory [2]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4034452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veidtous/pseuds/veidtous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is the middle of May and you are sitting on the edge of a pool. The air is cool and your stomach is burning. Your cup is smooth in your hands and absentmindedly you find yourself running the tips of your fingers over the ridges at the lip.</p><p>It gives you the sensation of skin.</p><p>It is the downslope of someone’s neck below of the curve of a jaw. You run your fingers over the edge of the cup, down the side, and back up again. Repeat – touch, touch, touch. Touch is what you are good at.</p><p>Touch is what keeps you moving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thick skin

It has been seventeen days since the end of May and you find yourself on the bridge again. Three hundred and eighty-two days have passed since you have last felt his love.

You touch the beams as you walk across it. The metal caresses you like an old friend. It cuts your fingertips and leaves rust on your palm that looks like gold. It shines in the sun, but fades into nothing when the light moves on. It looks dirty.

Almost two hundred days have passed since you began seeking pieces of him again. You don’t remember when you started to count. (You do).

Your fingers touch your hair as you walk across the pavement. It is wet from sweat and dirty stream water. It feels like a reminder. You cannot end it yet.

Not _yet_.

You want to touch his love again. You want to be touched by his need to love you again.

Just one  
             more  
                     time.

His face touches you with regret; his name touches you like fire now. He is burning you from the inside out.

You have become a man on his knees with rocks protruding from the pebbled flesh. It touches like the ache of a fresh wound that is gushing blood the color of his smile.

(Come back.)

 _Touch me_.

(I need you.)

 _Sustain me_.

You have become so very empty. You don’t want touch anymore, but you do. You want to be alone, but you don’t. You want to be his, but you don’t. It has gone so far past that now.

You need to be his. (You need help).

But you have always been terrible with your words.

The area around the bridge is quiet, void of muffled laughter and warmth. It stands as nothing but a stoic piece of industry against an otherwise beautiful backdrop of life. You think that the two hundredth day might be the last (it won’t be) but as you go across the rest of the structure you hear his voice.

It touches you like _Please_ and you yelp in surprise. The cold water that has been surrounding you ebbs away for a brief moment. You can feel the sun in his smile again and taste the It Can’t Be in the back of your throat. It’s bittersweet like dark chocolate and sea salt. It tastes like tears in the corner of his eyes when you tell him you love him. You go across the bridge to him before he has time to process that This Is Real and that You Are There.

You touch him like Forgive me. You have become a pleading man.

 _I love you, Marco_.

 _I love you, Mario_ , he says.

 

 

It is the end of May when he touches you and you feel like static.

You can’t breathe, you can’t see, you can’t even hear.

There is a concrete hand around your neck under the disguise of love. There is a hand that is covered in tar over your eyes.

The low hum of his voice blocks out all other sound around you. It is all so heavy now.

( _You are being weighed down by the thing you love the most._ )

You are the evil in his life – how you see the sun shine in his eyes when he looks at you and for a brief moment you think it will fix itself.

The moment subsides, the dark water is back and the sun is gone.

 _Help yourself_ , you say.

His heartbreak touches like battery acid on your tongue. It tastes like something rotten.

 

 

It is July when you look for answers in his touch.

You feel like you’re just treading in cement and drowning in the air around you.

He asks if you are okay and you touch the bare skin of his chest and feel the beats like _I’m okay_. (You cannot breathe without him).

You touch his collarbone like _It’s fine_. (It’s not).

You touch his lips like a wordless plea and he kisses them like they are made of gold.

 

 

It is the end of January and there is no longer a comfort in your soul. Your hands are searching for his like Do You Still Need Me?

Touch me. Touch me.

Touch _me_.

You are begging to your own sun.

His touch is like sandpaper against your skin. It leaves marks you cannot cover.

(But do you want to?)

You’re begging to your moon and all the stars that hang above you in his eyes. He touches you and it feels like broken glass under your skin.

It feels like present.

It feels like being. But you aren’t sure if that means alive. (So you don’t ask).

It’s not an answer you want to know.

( _You are sucking him dry_ ).

He is starting to wilt with love and you are so selfish.

It is fine, it’s fine, _He’s_ fine.

 _I love you, Marco_.

 

 

It is the beginning of September and it touches like sweaty fingers in late July.

He feels like _hot_ , he feels like I Need You Now. His touch grounds you to an otherwise shakable world and his name is heavy on your lips. You let your fingers roam over whatever part of his body you can find.

It keeps you in the moment. It keeps you in the now.

 

 

It is the middle of June and it touches like blooming spring. The air is cold and you are on a bridge looking for restitution for something you aren’t brave enough to name yet. There is a man some distance away from you.

He looks like I’m Lost. (But you don’t know how to fix that).

You are trying so hard to keep your own head above the waves. And oh how you are struggling.

You don’t want to speak to him, but it is an inevitably. His voice is sweet like melted sugar at a local festival, the kind that if you eat too much your stomach starts to convulse.

And you have always been a glutton for sensation.

 _Mario_.

 _Marco_.

His name touches you like teeth piercing your heart.

 

 

It is the middle of May and you are sitting on the edge of a pool. The air is cool and your stomach is burning. Your cup is smooth in your hands and absentmindedly you find yourself running the tips of your fingers over the ridges at the lip.

It gives you the sensation of skin.

It is the downslope of someone’s neck below of the curve of a jaw. You run your fingers over the edge of the cup, down the side, and back up again. Repeat – touch, touch, touch. Touch is what you are good at.

Touch is what keeps you moving.

The wind knocks the cup out of your hand and you don’t bother to pick it back up. The moment has passed, the sensation nothing more than a lingering thought in an otherwise bustling world. You will forget it in time.

The water of the pool ebbs towards you and flows away with some methodical pattern that your eyes try to follow. All it would take is done strong gust to cause the flow to wash over the edge of the molding and it touches a semblance in you.

You don’t notice the person next to you now, or you chose not to. People came and went in multiples ways after all – the people in the house behind you came and went all throughout the night with shouts and cheers, of touching and biting, of calling out to you in unknown tones. You hadn’t paid them any attention.

The person beside you now is the same. They say nothing, you say nothing. You savor the silence.

But your eyes become curious and you strain to keep them from creeping to the edge of your peripherals to see the body beside you.

He feels warm beside you, he feels like familiar.

He touches like _it’s_ _alright_.

The hour passes. He gets up and turns back to the house.

 _Thanks_ , you say.

He says nothing.

 

 

I’m saying your name on  
the bridge at dawn. Your name like an animal  
covered with frost, your name like a music that’s  
been transposed, a suit of fur, a coat of mud,  
a kick in the pants, a lungful of glass, the sails  
in wind and the slap of waves on the hull  
of a boat that’s sinking to the sound of mermaids  
singing songs of love, and the tug of a simple  
profound sadness when it sounds so far away.

\- _Richard Siken_

**Author's Note:**

> this goes in pair with my fic, cold skin, which is in marco's pov.
> 
> i know this might be a little odd to read but thank you for bearing with me. this is mario's story, told backwards on purpose to mirror the progression in marco's story. 
> 
> mario's is shorter than marco's to show the difficulty he faces in vocalizing. 
> 
> it is the same story, but it's not at the same time.
> 
> i wanted to make this different, where the end of marco's and the beginning of mario's meet at the same point. where if you were to read mario's from the bottom up, and marco's from the top to bottom they would meet and overlap. (happy ending that way??? h a h)
> 
> thank you for any/all comments and kudos and even more for just reading. xo (i listened to elastic heart by sia and antichrist by the 1975 for most of this)


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